Comments on: Ubuntu GNU/Linux soon to ship on 5% of all new PCshttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html
Brain candy for Happy MutantsMon, 15 Sep 2014 23:11:17 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2By: Anthttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1422413
Sat, 12 May 2012 03:38:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1422413Same here. KDE v3.5.10 for me as well. I know about Trinity as a fork, but it’s not official.
]]>By: regeyahttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1421079
Fri, 11 May 2012 01:35:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1421079Allegedly Foobar2000 will convert WML to FLAC, but I can’t try it.
]]>By: regeyahttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1421078
Fri, 11 May 2012 01:33:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1421078Nadine, it’s possible to use GParted to resize Windows 7 partitions. Of course, it’s a good idea to back up before you do this, though hopefully you’re already keeping backups.

It’s mostly point-and-click, but as LightningRose says, this isn’t something for an inexperienced person to be doing unless you’re really determined to expand your base of knowledge.

If you’re using a live CD or DVD, it might be on there, and if it’s something like Ubuntu, if it’s not already there you can temporarily install it on the liveCD session.

]]>By: regeyahttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1421076
Fri, 11 May 2012 01:29:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1421076“It’s not as bad as it was, but if you get into using it regularly you will encounter a frustrating problem at some point. It’s often enough to get people to give up on it.”

You just described…um…anything more complicated than a wristwatch. Seriously.

In a previous life I administered Macs. They have their own set of unique problems.

As far as the compatibility goes: you don’t specify what the problem was, so I’ll just assume it was MS Office. Heh, your colleagues get to enjoy an almost-but-not-quite-compatible version of MS Office, and will occasionally be frustrated when a Windows user sends them an Office doc created on Windows.

]]>By: regeyahttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1421072
Fri, 11 May 2012 01:25:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1421072iirc those things shipped with Xandros, which was the continuation of the Corel Linux distribution. I’m guessing this had to be one of the earlier ones that had next to no storage space, because Xandros was a Debian derivative.
]]>By: Guidohttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1420240
Thu, 10 May 2012 13:55:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1420240Thanks.

I am fine without lots of themes. Mate seems like the best option for me at this point. I am just settled in my ways, with keyboard shortcuts and switching desktops, etc.

I wonder if the CLI people felt like this when moving to the desktop

]]>By: LightningRosehttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1419614
Wed, 09 May 2012 23:00:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1419614 Cut and paste works fine for me and has for several years.
]]>By: social_maladroithttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1419579
Wed, 09 May 2012 22:30:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1419579Yep, it is Gnome 3, not Gnome 2. Here are some things to take into consideration.

It’s not gnome-shell, it’s a mode that’s made to look and feel like Gnome 2 did. The good thing about this is that you get something that looks and feels like gnome-panel did, but it’s built on the current version of Gnome, not the older, no-longer-maintained version of Gnome. The bad part about it is that everybody’s designing themes for gnome-shell, not gnome-fallback, so your theming choices are limited.

Also, remember that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (with Gnome 2) is supported for another year, so you don’t have to switch now if you don’t want to.

And if you do want to switch to something else, you can try Mate (a fork of Gnome 2 included with Linux Mint). There are even distros still built on Gnome 2 that yet attempt to include up-t0-date apps, such as Fuduntu and SolusOS. (Google them for more information.)

]]>By: penguinchrishttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1419120
Wed, 09 May 2012 17:17:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1419120Despite what people will tell you, oftentimes even today you’ll end up with the same sort of problems that the CS students would waste their time fixing instead of doing anything useful.

It’s not as bad as it was, but if you get into using it regularly you will encounter a frustrating problem at some point. It’s often enough to get people to give up on it.

I used linux as my primary OS for years, and still use it for server-esque computers and the like. I bought a Mac in grad school (in late 2009), giving up on linux as my primary OS, because I was spending too much time fixing linux (on a perfectly compatible Thinkpad which actually came with linux preinstalled and no Windows), and I had difficulty working and collaborating in a non-CS university department (a very large percentage of university scientists use OS X).

]]>By: Jorphohttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1419011
Wed, 09 May 2012 16:10:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1419011Isn’t Wubi still an option for those who do not wish to repartition?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_%28Ubuntu_installer%29
]]>By: LightningRosehttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1419003
Wed, 09 May 2012 16:04:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1419003 “…why would I want to use Linux?”

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Oh, wait… Sorry, I was thinking of another question. :)

I finally dumped MS-Win 2-1/2 years ago after the general annoyance got to be too much. Yes, Linux annoys me too, but not like windows does.

You mention the interface, so I assume you’re referring to the desktop. One feature that KDE, XFCE, and Gnome 2 have is multiple desktops. I can have as many as memory allows, but 4 suits my purposes. The desktop I’m using to type this is my email and browser desktop. With the mouse, or with [Ctrl][Alt][Arrow] I can move to my development desktop or my media desktop. I don’t know about Win-7, but XP and Vista did not have this feature.

You also mention Windows speed. Linux is much better in both system/application speed and memory utilization. About 2-1/2 years ago I acquired a new notebook with a 1.2 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, and Windows Vista. Oh my, was it ever a slug! Ubuntu turned it into a wonderful little machine.

It’s unclear to me, but the often maligned Unity desktop now shipping with the latest version of Ubuntu (v12.04) may be similar to what Windows-8 will look like.

If you really do like the idea of Linux and want to give it a good try without a ton of work, I suggest running it as a virtual machine under Vmware or VirtualBox (both free as in beer).

]]>By: digi_owlhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418996
Wed, 09 May 2012 16:01:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418996@boingboing-0328d081221f962475b35e217219e79e:disqus Just need to keep a shotgun handy i guess.
]]>By: digi_owlhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418997
Wed, 09 May 2012 16:01:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418997@boingboing-0328d081221f962475b35e217219e79e:disqus Just need to keep a shotgun handy i guess.
]]>By: LikesTurtleshttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418988
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:58:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418988Back during the Windows 3.1 days, I had a Slackware installation that I used for crunching large datasets. Though you could jump through a bunch of hoops to get XWindows working, for my tasks I didn’t see any use.

During college I messed with it some for classwork (mouse drivers, scheduling algorithms, etc) but since then have only installed it once. About five years ago I installed whatever was the Ubuntu distribution at the time. It looked nice but I couldn’t get cut and paste to work between applications. Asking around a bit all I got was “we’re working on it but it’ll probably be awhile if ever”. Is this still the case? GUI eye candy is nice and all but if I can’t do something as simple as cut and paste consistently, then it really is of little use to me.

]]>By: LikesTurtleshttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418989
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:58:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418989Back during the Windows 3.1 days, I had a Slackware installation that I used for crunching large datasets. Though you could jump through a bunch of hoops to get XWindows working, for my tasks I didn’t see any use.

During college I messed with it some for classwork (mouse drivers, scheduling algorithms, etc) but since then have only installed it once. About five years ago I installed whatever was the Ubuntu distribution at the time. It looked nice but I couldn’t get cut and paste to work between applications. Asking around a bit all I got was “we’re working on it but it’ll probably be awhile if ever”. Is this still the case? GUI eye candy is nice and all but if I can’t do something as simple as cut and paste consistently, then it really is of little use to me.

]]>By: EHhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418977
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:52:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418977I said “decent.” The screen on the XPS13 is low resolution.
]]>By: EHhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418978
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:52:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418978I said “decent.” The screen on the XPS13 is low resolution.
]]>By: EHhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418979
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:52:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418979I said “decent.” The screen on the XPS13 is low resolution.
]]>By: LightningRosehttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418914
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418914 I’m another Unity hater, but it’s also true I haven’t yet upgraded to Ubuntu v12.04, so I will give it another chance.

I used to prefer KDE, but with v4 it seemed to become a fanboy version of Windows Vista so I switched to Gnome. Mate looks like it will be my desktop of choice in the future.

And the Linux distribution can make a big difference. I don’t know what was installed on your eeePC, but Ubuntu is arguably the easiest version to use. A couple of weeks ago, the automatic updater took care of Firefox with just the click of a button, and this morning it wanted to upgrade Flash (I said, no, do it some other time).

It’s true I’m one of those old programmer fogies you alluded to, but most of the time I use the shell (aka command line) it’s to do something esoteric that simply is not available on MS-Win or Apple Mac.

]]>By: Guidohttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418864
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:09:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418864Because getting software is often free. Because you can modify the code to your needs (If you need a spreadsheet with more than 65.000 rows, for instance). Because you do not need to waste processor and RAM on an antivirus tool that gets your PC as slow as if it had a virus, and since you build your computers, why pay more to Microsoft?

My next laptop is going to be a System 76 machine. Linux by default. Say bye bye yo this nightmarish HP.

]]>By: Guidohttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418856
Wed, 09 May 2012 15:01:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418856Ugh!
]]>By: Francisco Vilahttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418851
Wed, 09 May 2012 14:58:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418851 On a fresh install of 12.04, you need to install the gnome-panel package. Then you can choose “Gnome classic” from the login menu. But this is gnome3, not gnome2.
]]>By: LightningRosehttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418825
Wed, 09 May 2012 14:19:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418825Convert your WMLs back to the also lossless wav format and then convert the wavs to FLAC.

Once you have the FLAC files on your Linux system, and you have fixed the tags (I like EasyTAG) download Select-o-Magic 3000 (my own program) to generate playlists for your favorite audio player (which really should be Audacious) :)

]]>By: Sylviahttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418815
Wed, 09 May 2012 14:05:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418815I am a Windows and Mac user who is decent at troubleshooting basic tech problems. I got an eeePC with Linux already installed on it, thinking that any problems could be solved with a bit of forum searching, and absolutely hated the thing.

There was no way to just click a window and update Firefox and Flash. There was no way to install ANYTHING via a simple user interface – I had never heard of the Linux terms before, and the process of installing software was ENDLESSLY frustrating.

I then tried to transfer all of my files from it onto an external hard drive with universal formatting and it KEPT ON FAILING. It wouldn’t just fail one file or two files, if one file could’t go, the entire CHUNK stopped.

Everyone who I know who uses Linux happily is also a programmer, completely unfazed by using a command line to do absolutely everything. The average user needs a GUI that makes intuitive sense (yes I know there’s a ‘package installer’ or some such but it NEVER worked for me – there was always something important unavailable.)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that (pretty much) all Linux users are either programmers or old enough to remember a world before Windows. It makes no sense for most computer users.

I really gave it a chance, I did, but it felt like I was learning a whole new syntax just to do something that would take 5 minutes on a PC or Mac.

You can get a taste of Linux by downloading a “live” distro such as Ubuntu and install it on a CD-ROM or USB flash drive which you can then boot from without affecting your current windows system.

If you want to try Linux for an extended period of time without messing with your hard drive’s partitions, then I suggest you install Linux as a virtual machine with either Vmware or VirtualBox. This way, if you decide Linux is not for you, you can get rid of it just by deleting a few files.

Either way, you’ll find helpful people at your local LUG (Linux Users Group), easily found with Google.

]]>By: LightningRosehttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418806
Wed, 09 May 2012 13:45:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418806 Jon, I remember those days. I started using Linux in 1996, but it wasn’t until 2009 that I considered using it for anything but a platform for software development.

Today I use Ubuntu for all my computer needs, except for a very few MS-Win apps that I still need and run under Win-XP inside Oracle’s VirtualBox.

]]>By: Thorzdadhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418755
Wed, 09 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418755shipped ≠ sold
]]>By: Thorzdadhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418756
Wed, 09 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418756shipped ≠ sold
]]>By: chris dowdenhttp://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/ubuntu-gnulinux-soon-to-ship.html#comment-1418729
Wed, 09 May 2012 11:41:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=159213#comment-1418729 Damn betcha. I got so wound up on my own misery that I lost sight of the whole open v closed argument.
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